Rick Wakeman Quotes

I was in the band for the first six albums.

It's been over 15 years since I toured... over 12 years since I did any recording under my own name. I never really intended to take that long of a hiatus.

The thing is that I've known the guys from Motley Crue longer than just about everybody.

I'm still shocked when people say, 'You haven't done a studio record in 20 years.' I try to make excuses for it, but the truth is I just wasn't with it.

I did a lot of writing for a lot of different kinds of bands that I was in and out of during those five years and that left me with a little body of songs that I liked better when I played alone, so I ended up going out solo and very soon made my first album.

Although there are people who regard 'Do You Want More?!!!??!' as our first major release, I think 'Things Fall Apart' was the real arrival of The Roots, so to speak.

Our bassist, Tim Staffell, was at art college with Frederick Bulsara, who changed his name to Freddie Mercury and joined the band on vocals after Tim left in 1970.

I did not work for a year after 'Margarita With a Straw'.

The first album is a special one for most bands or most artists in general. The first record is your whole life, and then after that you have a couple of months to write stuff and get it for the next record.

When I broke up with Eric B., I went on a little hiatus. Then all I was trying do is find producers. It's real hard, man.

The period of time between when you're done with a record and when you start touring is the worst period of a time in a musician's life.

Well the first record is something that you just put so much into. And the second record, people always talk about the sophomore jinx and everything, but I was still able to get through it and still focus on what I needed to do and make timeless music.

It's not like I decided to continue the Stone Temple Pilots.

We were a band way before we ever did anything with Disney.

I always say, 'Hey, I'm in Metallica, but I wasn't on the Black Album.'

Everyone always tells you about how amazing recording their first album was and how they'll always look back on the 'process' with fond memories. I will look back on it as an extremely stressful time that somehow also managed to be extremely boring.

'Lemonade' resonated with me, and I love the direction Beyonce is going with her music and her career.

Well, I always leave massive gaps between albums.

There's no grace period between album one and album two.

[I wanted] to play the clarinet well so I could be in Duke Ellington's band, but that's now impossible.

I didn't work for a year after Wall Street. I finished that in November, and then it was the following October that I did Drive, so I took a year off. I didn't do anything at all, really. I just hung around.

I know a lot of bands that will make their first record and get to a certain level, and then when the second record comes out, they can start where they left off as a headlining act playing in front of a certain number of people, or they can go back out and make a lot less money and open for people. I feel like if you go out and just go right back into that headlining stuff, you're playing to the converted.

I don't make my living making records. Maybe someday I will.

In the rest of the world we had had two albums that were successful, so those two albums' hits and this new four-single package made up an album called Wham! The Final, which is basically greatest hits. We couldn't have done a greatest hits over here, because we'd only done one hit album.

It was 2002, we all got guitars for Christmas and started playing in my garage that summer, rehearsed there and in a warehouse for a bit for about a year. We did our first gig in June 2003 and we played a few gigs in and around Sheffield for a bit then started doing gigs outside of Sheffield about this time last year, recording demos while all this was going on.